Of a preacher and a book and free love.

Stywe dinge/Tight thighs

Can you believe it. Wrote to the publishers of Tight Lines/Stywe Lyne about an image I captured during 1982. In the water is my Brother in law and on the boat my younger sister and Joyce Davenport . I was behind the lens of my trusty Canon AE 1 Program camera. Wow !, thank you guys this brings back a lot of good memories.

You can never own a person they are not possessions, even if you love them.

In my life I had to learn this the hard way. I was a little boy and met this horse-riding girl during a school holiday. I would try to impress her at the pool with my physique and then she asked me to fetch her horse Lucerne. I battled for a long time to drag a bale of Lucerne to her and she laughed telling me I am silly removing a piece of wire and taking out a small block of pressed Lucerne.

My heart was bleeding dragging back that bale of Lucerne to where I found it being angry because I did not know. That was the end of my affection for the first little girl that captured my heart.

I met this guy on Facebook he used to be a Dutch Reformed preacher turned journalist after the church kicked him out. My father was a preacher that got kicked out and became a Pastor.

So this rejected preacher wrote a book and I was on my way to a Farmers Market in Silverton near Pretoria(Tshwane) . This guy answered my lamentations when I discovered my Mother In-law’s radio broke. He drove all the way to Utrecht in KZN, where she lives to give her a new radio. Why did I not just buy one?. Because my dear friend you cannot buy stories you have to live and create them.

My first Job after compulsory Military Service of two years was as  an agricultural journalist at a Bi-weekly agricultural Newspaper called. Die Kouter. It was situated near the place where I found the ex-preacher, now journalist and author. I lived on a Plot at Die Wilgers in a wooden hut next to a Farm dam not far from there.

I wanted him to autograph the book I bought for Mother In-law, 27 years my senior. The age difference, why would that be relevant or important? ,read on all shall be revealed.  She was very impressed that this important person traveled so far to replace her radio and now she has a book written and autographed by this person.

Izak du Plessis signing Maria"s book

My beloved mother in law 

How I ended up as a journalist has to do with women and the way I interact with them. My Army days were hectic I was an Infantry man trained at 5 SAI military base in Ladysmith KZN. One day two of us troops were summoned to visit the Commandant’s office. That was after all and sunder were questioned and interviewed to test our language proficiency and writing ability. I am fully bilingual in Afrikaans, my mother tongue and English. The other bloke was an English speaking boy that could speak Afrikaans.

Handsome soldier, I was, my sugar mommy would aggree

We were both shit scared to be summoned to the Chiefs office. There we were ordered back to our tents to collect our gear and carry it back to his office. We were loaded on A Bedford truck and taken to the station where we would board a train For Pretoria. We were escorted by two Military Policeman like convicts to ensure we would reach Defence Force Head Quarters in Deqaur Road in that city.

We were qualified soldiers who completed our six month basic training successfully. We found out only on arriving in Pretoria that General Dutton ordered that we work as translators and collators of News Items pertaining to Military matters, for his office.

What has this to do with women in my life? We worked in the Media Liaison office under Colonel Basson who reported to General Dutton. During our work we met many journalists and VIP’s. We accompanied tours to the Operational Area in Namibia. On one particular tour I escorted International and South African female journalists.

Joyce Davenport was the secretary of the media Liaison office; she used to be Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha’s secretary based in Washington America. She had very blond hair and was very fit and filled her Army Uniform in a very pleasing manner. She was 27 years my senior.

One day I found out by chance that it was Joyce’s birthday. I made a plan to get to a flower seller and bought a red rose and I bought a slab of chocolates from my meagre Army pay. I went to her office with it behind my back and walked straight up to her and gave her an unsuspected peck on the cheek congratulating her with her birthday.

That was it. She went to Colonel Basson and got permission that I need not stay in the Barracks any longer and that she would take responsibility for my accommodation.

I moved into the home, in Lynnwood Road where she lived. She Drove a Red left hand steering Mercedes Benz she brought back from Washington. I was supposed to live in a flat let on her property but ended up in her bed and we were lovers.

Her son was older than me and one day I donnered him good when he tried to attack his mother. Her mother lived with her and although she disapproved of her daughter’s young lover she tolerated me.

Joyce was well known in Pretoria’s A List social scene. She knew many journalists as a result and when I ended my Military training she informed me she organised me the job at Promedia.

My job often took me out of town to farms all across South Africa. I attended Agricultural Conferences in major Cities and visited far flung farms. This caused strain in our relationship and that is how I ended up hiring the wooden hut on the plot from a professor at the University of Pretoria.

Die Kouter folded due to financial reasons and my editor introduced me to the Editor of Die Travsvaler Newspaper where I would work as a Supreme Court reporter. That is where I met my first wife, Marinda Pretorius and we soon eloped getting married in the nude under a waterfall in Graskop in the Eastern Transvaal.

marinda an I on our weddig day in the Pub of the Roayal Hotel in Pilgrims Rest.

I kid you not the story was published in the official Perskor Magazine. So I left my blond Sugar Mommy and married a blond bombshell and we moved to the Southern Cape to work at a group of local newspapers on the coast.

Marinda eloped with a man many years her junior whom, I trained to become a journalist. They are still married. By that time I have left journalism after an incident with the publisher and my then wife.

I worked myself up in my new career and ended up working mainly in the OEM sector as a logistics expert for a courier company. One of my staff members at VW SA warehouse in Roodekop introduced me to her sister on a blind date and we got married and are still married.

My second wife was not blond she has African blood and is known as a Coloured in our country. It was because of my love an appreciation for her mother that I was driving to Silverton to buy a book from Izak du Plessis.

Monica and I on our wedding day.

There is one thing wrong with my story thus far and that is the ME I often use. My this and me that, they never belonged to me and should never because they are not objects of my desire but fellow human beings.

I have had many lovers in my life and I did everything under the sun in every way possible and in any place imaginable. Age never mattered, the sugar mommy was the oldest, the two girlfriends, my wife allowed me, was sixteen.

I grew up mostly keeping to myself. I was an introvert that loved reading and loved writing poems. I am eternally romantic. So it happened that I spent a lot of time outdoors in the beautiful country I live in. Always alone, always far away, from other people.

I loved African women from a very early age and always imagined living amongst them naked and free and adventurous. I used to page through adult books in the library and was allowed to because I was respectful and silent. I was mesmerized by the beauty of black girls who proudly displayed their firm breasts and rounded bottoms unashamed in their traditional dress.

There were two incidents on far flung deserted beaches along the unspoiled coast line of South Africa. I never told anyone about it because it was illegal in my country for people to mix across the race line. I was inexperienced and shy and will suffice to say that after those encounters I was wiser and a lot freer in my approach to the opposite sex.